Step by Step
by SeaSpectre160
Summary: Gaim: Healing is not a process that happens overnight, whether it is the body that needs healing or the mind. And especially not when it's both. [Part of 'Repair' and 'World of All Riders']


**Hello, and welcome back to the 'Repair' series, and the 'World of All Riders' series. This is just a smaller fic I've been working on on and off for a while, as 'The Infiltration' is still going slowly.**

 **DISCLAIMER: Kamen Rider Gaim does not belong to me. Neither do any elements from other Kamen Rider series. Zack's family is all mine, however.**

 **WORD COUNT: 3729**

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Zack's leg bothers him more than he's willing to admit.

This isn't his first broken bone. He's had cracked ribs before, and he once broke a bone in his hand punching a guy in the face. This is different. This time, he's taken serious damage to his femur: the biggest and strongest bone in the human body. Which means that it also takes longer to heal than any other bone. That damaged femoral artery is a concern, too.

He once heard some guy say that no one ever died from breaking a bone. Some guy out there is a moron.

He's probably going to have a faint scar on his inner thigh forever, but without that emergency surgery, the internal bleeding would have killed him. The doctor tells him that he's lucky to be alive _and_ to still have two legs; the tourniquet that was applied in the helicopter and kept him alive on the way to the hospital had almost been on long enough to cause dangerous complications upon being removed. Complications that would have forced them to amputate the entire leg.

His grandparents are finally brought to him three days after his evacuation; they were sent to a different city after getting out of Zawame, and communication between the different groups of refugees is still chaotic. His grandmother cries and embraces him, squeezing him until Azami-san informs her of his broken ribs, then she jumps back and settles for kissing his forehead and cheeks over and over, much to his embarrassment. She and Ojii-san agree to share a hotel room with Peko and Azami, the two of his surviving friends that they know best.

Just as he was one of the last to be evacuated, he's the last of the Beat Riders to return to Zawame City, but not by choice. Being as injured as he is, he's kept in the hospital in Fuuto while his able-bodied friends are allowed to go home. His grandparents use this time to find a new apartment, one with better accessibility than the one they've been living in for years. With all the dead and missing people, as well as those who have simply decided not to return, there's a surprising number of places available.

There's a welcoming party when he finally returns to Zawame; Peko and Chucky and Jōnouchi and Rat and Rica and all the other Beat Riders are there, as well as Ōren-san and Kazuraba Akira. Micchy's absence is a bit disappointing, but not unexpected at all.

Once he gets free of the cast, the physical therapy pretty much takes over his life. Just flexing and straightening his leg is a difficult and painful process in the beginning, and that's when he really starts to wonder if he'll ever return to the stage. How can he ever dance with his friends again when he can't even stand on his own two feet? Peko assures him the he will make a full recovery, but it falls a little flat when his friend is saying it while half-carrying him to the bathroom.

His grandparents' new apartment pretty much always has a Beat Rider in residence to help out with that sort of thing. Ojii-san and Obaa-san just don't have the strength to handle that kind of heavy lifting – he's not exactly the little boy who used to ride around on their shoulders, anymore. Peko basically claims the couch as his bed not long after, since he's around the most.

Months pass.

First he regains the strength to stand with some support, and finally gets to hobble around on crutches instead of spending his entire day sitting or lying down. It leaves him exhausted and sore, but he's deliriously happy to be moving without the aid of a wheelchair or another person.

It still takes him a few weeks of practice before he starts going to the Beat Riders' performances. The first ones to see him run up to hug him right in the middle of the dance, confusing the people watching quite a bit. He's not even wearing his Team Baron outfit that day; it doesn't quite feel right. Not yet.

Peko and Chucky, when not helping out with him, have sort of taken over leadership of the Beat Riders as a whole. After all, Zack is out of commission for the foreseeable future, Jōnouchi has been working at Charmant full-time, Kaito, Hase, and Yūya are all dead, Micchy is holed up at home and avoiding pretty much everyone, and Kōta and Mai are… who knows where?

He tries to push through his recovery more quickly; it comes back to bite him in the ass when he stumbles and falls on the kitchen floor. He lands on his right side, the side with the leg that still works perfectly well, but everyone pressures him to stick with the wheelchair for the next 48 hours, and he's sore for hours afterwards.

It's then that he decides to take a break from it all. He gets an e-mail from his little sister, the one that his friends on Team Baron know about but have never met in person. This is because Emma lives in America with her mother (they're half-siblings who share a father), and has only visited him in Japan once, before the Beat Riders were even a thing. She tells him that her mother, who divorced their father years ago, is getting remarried, and that he's been invited to the wedding.

Zack's relationship with his ex-stepmother Gianna is a strange one, in that it is perfectly pleasant, considering that Zack basically owes his very existence to his father cheating on her, and that said affair was part of the chain of events that led directly to their divorce. Between his father, half-sister, and ex-stepmother, one wouldn't expect the ex-stepmother to be the one he gets along with best, but with his father constantly in and out of the picture and Emma now firmly in her 'rebellious drama queen teenager who thinks all the adults in her life out to ruin her life' phase, there isn't even that much competition. Gianna simply treats him like he's the son of an old friend, even though she never met Zack's mom, and respects the fact that he's her daughter's brother, because the reasons why are hardly his fault.

So he spends an unexpectedly eventful week in America with his family (and Gianna's less-understanding relatives), but that's a story for another time.

Things get better after he gets back. Nearly three months after his injury, he graduates from two crutches to one, but he keeps the wheelchair for the days when he just doesn't have the strength to hobble around.

It's while he's watching his friends dance that he sees Micchy for the first time since the younger boy was discharged from the hospital in Fuuto. The kid doesn't say anything to him; he stands and watches from afar, dressed in shabby clothing that no one would associate with the smiling dancer, the aloof heir to the Kureshima family, or the crazed traitor. Zack almost doesn't recognise him at first, which he imagines is the whole point. When Zack calls his name, he turns and runs away. Well, actually, he just walks away, but Zack's in no shape to catch up to him, especially not when there are stairs in between the two of them.

(He finds himself _hating_ stairs with a passion these days.)

The day he takes a step without holding onto anything is a momentous occasion for him. It's a long way from dancing, but it's a victory nonetheless.

He starts going to rehearsals, starts working his leg to handle the stress of dancing again. The first time he tries a simple routine – one he's been doing for years – at half-speed, he has to stop before he's even halfway through. His leg is throbbing, and the pain is making him dizzy; he has to sit down quickly or he'll risk falling over. He limps all the way back home with a worried Peko practically glued to one side, and Jōnouchi – who drops by to say hi that day – on the other.

Bit by bit, he starts to improve. He manages to last longer every time he tries it, and he's grinning like a maniac the first time he manages to complete a routine without stopping – even if he all but collapses on the couch afterwards and someone has to run to get him an ice pack. Soon, six and a half months after breaking his leg, he's well enough to go up on stage with his friends once more, and even his grandparents, who generally don't come and watch him dance, are in the front row and cheering him on.

That doesn't mean that his recovery is complete, however. His leg still pains him afterwards, and he learns how to limp without looking like he's limping, because Peko is the most frantic mother hen he's ever met, while Chucky is the bossiest, and there's only so much he can take when the two of them gang up on him.

When that Kougane guy shows up – Zack finds the name familiar, like something from a dream he had a long time ago and forgot – there's not much he can do. His Driver didn't fare nearly as well as he did during that last fight, and it looks like it may be the end. The only fighter on Earth with a functioning Driver is Micchy, who seems to haunt the city like a ghost, and Zack feels that the kid is in no shape, mentally or emotionally, to step up and go into battle.

So when Jōnouchi stumbles up to them, gasping about using a secret Driver and Lockseed that Takatora-san had been keeping (because _of course_ that guy would have a backup plan in case of an emergency), getting beaten, and Micchy showing up to fight after all, you could knock Zack over with a feather – and not just because a day of dancing and then getting his ass kicked has his leg aching more than usual. He follows Jōnouchi and Ōren-san to the battleground, Takatora-san right behind him, and there's Micchy, standing there alone and looking worlds better than he was just a day ago.

The kid is actually _smiling_ – no, not smiling, but _beaming_ – when he sees them approaching, and the grin only widens as he runs straight into Takatora-san's arms. Zack hasn't been entirely informed on how the brothers' relationship has been recovering, but the older man's reaction suggests that this is new. Good, but new.

Micchy doesn't go straight back to hanging out with the other Beat Riders, but he is willing to actually talk things out with the four ex-Armoured Riders, which is a major improvement. He tells them about how Kōta showed up to help him defeat Kougane and then left again. And when Takatora-san leaves for America the following day, Zack frequently stops by the Kureshima house to keep Micchy company, and even takes a few late-night phone calls when the kid has had yet another nightmare and has no one else to talk to.

Micchy quickly gets absorbed into what is semi-jokingly called the 'Armoured Rider Therapy Group', because not a single one of them came out of that war unscathed. Nightmares were quite frequent in the immediate aftermath, and they gravitated together to talk about what they were going through, because really, who else can they go to? They all agreed to keep certain parts of the story a secret between them, and some therapists would probably send them straight to an insane asylum if they talked about Inves invasions and the like.

And they _need_ to talk. Micchy may be the most damaged of them by far, but they've all taken their fair share of hits to their psyches.

Ōren, ironically, is the most 'stable' of all of them, the one who has the least to deal with. He was never involved in the power plays between the different sides, and wasn't even leading their group despite being the oldest and most experienced of them (although many of their team battle strategies were devised primarily by him). But he admits that the whole situation has brought up… highly unpleasant memories from his past combat days.

Jōnouchi was slowly growing more worried about Hase's fate until he was finally informed of his old friend/ally's death, and is still more than a little confused over why Kōta, Kaito, and Minato never told him (apparently all three knew about Hase getting killed – two of those three were even _there_ when it happened – but never mentioned it to Jōnouchi, despite spending about a month living in close quarters with him). Unfortunately, he won't get any answers unless Kōta comes back and actually sticks around long enough to answer their questions.

Takatora-san is the type to take everything on his shoulders, regardless of whether it's really his fault or responsibility, or not. The whole thing has also given him a few trust issues – he considered Sengoku Ryōma to be his closest friend before the psycho scientist had him thrown off a cliff. He doesn't talk much about how he feels about his failure to help his little brother, but Zack knows that the elder Kureshima frequently meets with Kōta's big sister, and knows that they're both older siblings who basically raised their respective younger brothers, so he's probably confiding in her on that matter. So at least _someone's_ working with him on that end of things.

As for Zack himself, he manages to handle what happened pretty well… most of the time. He can go on and smile like everything's normal, especially as things do gradually get back to normal – to a point. But then there are those days when he remembers the bomb and the fact that he has _killed_ someone, and that no matter how necessary it was, that bare fact is something he will always have to live with… and he just… crashes. Shuts down and wonders how anyone can stand to look at him. The recurring nightmares of fiery explosions and blood on his hands don't help in the slightest.

The first time they try to get Micchy re-integrated with the rest of the Beat Riders… does not go so well. The remaining members of Team Gaim welcome him back eagerly, their old friendship with him winning out in the end. Most of the others, the ones who got out of Zawame immediately after everything went to hell, are somewhat wary, but otherwise indifferent.

Peko? Not so much. Having an Overlord sicced on you by someone you considered a friend is something that is neither forgotten nor forgiven easily. He refuses to speak to Micchy the entire time he's there, but that's better than blowing up and demanding that he get the hell out, so that's something to be grateful for. Micchy isn't surprised in the slightest by this reaction – if anything, he's more still confused at the others' acceptance of him than anything else.

Then Megahex arrives and kills Kōta right in front of them. Zack once again believes it may be the end for them all, because he knows that Kōta has basically become the closest thing possible to a _god_ thanks to the Golden Fruit. If something out there can kill _him_ , what chance do the rest of them have?

He's relieved beyond measure when he sees Micchy shortly after, even if the kid is wounded and collapses at their feet seconds after they spot him, because he went to fight Megahex and came out _alive_.

Zack is more than a little confused about the rest of the whole Megahex affair, even when it's all explained to him afterwards. All he knows is that a Helheim plant with a single fruit spontaneously grew in the Beat Riders' garage, that Micchy snagged a Sengoku Driver from one of Megahex's soldiers during his earlier fight, and that Takatora-san used them both to get his old powers back. The last time Zack saw the brothers, they were heading off into battle that they may or may not survive, let alone win, and then they come back (Takatora-san having also somehow acquired a replacement Genesis Driver and matching Energy Lockseed) and talk about Kōta coming back to life somehow and another mysterious Armoured Rider showing up and flying off to space with Kōta in a high tech car to blow up an evil, sentient _planet_ … It makes Zack's head hurt.

But Kōta and Mai actually stay to hang out with them for a while this time before going back to the business of running a planet of their own, and they get to fill their friends on everything they've been up to. The others finally get to hear all about this amazing new world that Kōta and Mai have created from a barren wasteland of a planet.

After they leave, everyone is notably in better shape than they were before this whole Megahex thing, particularly the Kureshima brothers. Micchy seems… lighter, like a portion of the guilt weighing on him has finally been lifted. Apparently he personally rescued Mai from Megahex's clutches, which has to have helped with easing the guilt of his unwitting contribution to her temporary 'death' at the hands of Sengoku Ryōma. And Takatora-san is attacking his quest to fix the damage done during the Helheim mess with a whole new energy.

That's twice, now, that he's had to sit back and watch while his friends fight over the fate of the world. And it sucks. Maybe he could handle it a bit better if he was never an Armoured Rider, never got used to being in the fight, himself. But he was, and he did. And now he feels… useless.

It's part of the reason why he decides to leave Zawame. Not permanently, of course, but he just feels like he needs to get away from it all for a while. So he decides to move to New York. There are plenty of opportunities for him to audition for and possibly land a gig there. And it's something he wanted to do before aliens from another dimension invaded his home and everything became about surviving and saving the human race.

It turns out to be a mistake. He spends less than two months in New York, going to every audition he can find, but never gets a callback. He expects this, somewhat; it would be unrealistic to think he would get accepted at his very first audition. But it does get depressing, after a while, and his leg sure isn't thanking him for the extra work he's been putting it through. But the real problem is what happens at home while he's gone.

He gets onto the first flight back home that he can manage after Jōnouchi calls him back and explains the whole 'Neo Baron' thing Zack has heard about. He fights to save Peko and Team Baron from Shura, even if the battle leaves him bedridden for a couple days afterwards (he's pretty sure he's fine to walk around the following day, but Peko and Chucky are even _worse_ mother hens when they have Azami-san backing them up). But on the bright side, he is an Armoured Rider once more. Micchy comes over the day after everything happens and explains exactly _how_ he happened to have a spare Driver and Lockseeds for Zack, and _why_ :

After the attacks by Kougane and Megahex, neither of the Kureshima brothers were comfortable with being the only Armoured Riders left on Earth, nor with just hoping that Kōta will come and bail them out should the two of them not be enough. So they used what resources they had to have new Drivers created, and apparently Takatora talked Kōta into providing him with some Helheim fruits to use for the Lockseeds. It just took them that long to get Zack's completed, and new Drivers for Jōnouchi and Ōren are going to be finished soon.

Zack wonders if it's the best idea, getting back into the fight. It's taken so much out of them all, already. And that's not taking into account the fact that he's killed again; Takatora-san has to use some of his old connections to ensure that Zack's hand in Shura's death is ruled as self-defence, in order to keep him out of trouble. The nightmares come back in full force for a week straight afterwards, which worry his grandparents considerably (and Zack doesn't even tell them about Shura, or about the fact that he has killed at all – they don't even know about Minato).

But he knows that Micchy and Takatora are particularly glad to have their powers back; they want to atone for their past sins, and this gives them plenty of opportunities to do so. And it has been torture to just sit on the sidelines and wonder if his friends are going to come back safely.

So Zack accepts it. He wants the power, but not to lord it over others or force his ideals on the world. He wants to make sure that those who do will be stopped, and that his friends will have someone to watch their backs and keep them safe in battle.

It's taken him over a year, but bit by bit, step by step, Zack is ready to take on his next challenge

(Although, when Sōma Haruto approaches them with one, he's not the only one who thinks it's insane.)

THE END

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 **The new challenge will, as you may have guessed, be covered in 'The Infiltration'. And the 'story for another time' is another fic that I have yet to come up with a title for.**

 **I'm not a medical expert, but I have heard that leaving a tourniquet on too long can do damage, enough to have to resort to amputation. The logic is as follows: the tourniquet, when applied to, say, the leg, cuts off all circulation to that limb below where it's applied. While this is the whole point, to keep blood from flowing out of a wound, this means that there is no blood flow in the limb at all, and without blood delivering oxygen and other important things, the cells start dying. After a while, those dead cells start to build up, and just taking the tourniquet off could result in those dead cells being carried through the body by the resumed blood flow. And if those dead cells reach the heart or the brain… well, bad things are going to happen. So sometimes, it winds up better to just cut off the whole limb.**


End file.
